Ex-member Tells Of Gang's Jail Rules

February 06, 1996|By Matt O'Connor, Tribune Staff Writer.

After several years in the Gangster Disciples, Ricky Harris had become inactive, spending more time working at a hardware store installing burglar bars for customers--and committing burglaries in his spare time.

In 1985, he was arrested and incarcerated, and on that first day in Cook County Jail, he was approached in a bathroom by two men.

"They asked me if I was hooked up," Harris recalled Monday in federal court as he testified at the first of three trials of gang leaders. Yes, he was a GD, he told them.

Later that day, the "first c"--short for coordinator, the gang's top leader in that unit of the jail--came to check his references and to deliver a "poor box" of toiletries.

If he wasn't in the gang's "good graces," punishment could be severe, a beating that would end with the victim being "carried out on a stretcher" to Cermak Hospital, Harris said.

But Harris checked out, and he was soon immersed behind jail walls in GD literature, which he was required to study. He also learned the "creed," which he recited from memory in court. It is a paean to Gangster Disciple leader Larry Hoover, referring to him as "our honorable chairman" and speaking of "the vision of our great leader."

Gang members were required to attend regular meetings to discuss security, pay weekly dues so incoming GDs received poor boxes and tighten up lines so no one could cut in when they walked to the recreation room, Harris said.

Violations could be handed out weekly for breaking GD laws. When a riot broke out in one yard in late 1985, two GD members fled, Harris said. That violated GD law to "aid and assist," and both had to be hospitalized from the beatings they endured.

If anyone fought back during the beatings, he said, "it will get worse."

It was in this fashion, prosecutors say, that the Gangster Disciples instilled discipline in thousands of their members behind prison and jail walls and formed a more powerful gang when they were paroled back on the streets of Chicago.

Harris, nicknamed "Slick Rick," was the latest former gang member to testify at the federal trial of eight GD members and associates. Hoover is scheduled to be tried in October.

Prosecutors also played tapes Monday in which it was revealed that Charles Banks, also a GD, had cooperated with the government and arranged to buy 2 ounces of cocaine last February from a Gangster Disciple. Alongside Banks was an undercover Chicago police officer posing as his cousin.

In what Chicago police believe was a hit ordered by the gang after learning of his government assistance, Banks, 28, was fatally shot several times in the head last June 9 as he stepped from a car in the 11000 block of South Ashland Avenue.

Last week, prosecutors cited the killings of Banks and a second potential government witness in warning about the risks that Bertha Mosby, Hoover's longtime former girlfriend, faces since she, too, has agreed to cooperate.

Harris, an 18-year member of the gang, agreed to cooperate after surviving an accidental fall from a 10-story window in June 1993.

Harris, 31, who suffered severe leg injuries, was wheeled into court but walked unaided up a couple of steps to the witness chair, holding a cane in one of his hands.

He suffered his injuries when, frightened he might be the target of a gang hit when he saw shadowy figures lurking outside an apartment, he tied about a dozen sheets together and tried to lower himself out the window. But the sheets unraveled and he fell to the ground.

Still conscious, he learned his fears had been mistaken when two police officers ran up and shouted, "Freeze!" He was wanted on several warrants.

Once facing up to life in prison for drug offenses, Harris could serve as little as 7 1/2 years in prison as a result of his aid to prosecutors.

Harris testified that political money raised by the gang from drug sales went to pay light, phone and other bills at 21st Century VOTE, a political action committee that prosecutors say is linked to the Gangster Disciples.